For the last several years of her life my
grandmother went to the same
little store in town and
bought tee shirts for my uncle and his family
for
Christmas. The tee shirts were always exactly the same;
solid
colors, with no design on the front or back.
She always had their names
printed on the back in two
inch white block letters. Then she wrapped
them in
recycled Christmas paper that she'd been saving
since
Eisenhower was president and mailed them to my
uncle's home in
California.
When it was no longer safe for grandma to
drive, the tee shirts became
my project. She'd give
me the money and tell me what colors she wanted,
and
then she would remind me to have the names printed on
the back. I'd
bring the shirts home and she'd wrap
them in recycled paper. Then she'd
give me more money
and instruct me to mail them in plenty of time to
get
there by the twenty-fifth.
I
loved my grandma dearly and I didn't mind doing errands
for her, but
after a few years of sending the same
thing I started to wonder if my
uncle and his family
couldn't remember who they were unless they had
their
names on their shirt.
A
friend of mine said her grandfather had always given her
and her
older sister the same gift every, year too;
only instead of tee shirts
she always received a box
of chocolate covered cherries. "Every year we
got the
same thing. To tell you the truth, I never was really
that
crazy about candy, but the Christmas after
Grand-dad died, I can't tell
you how much I missed
those chocolate covered cherries."
It doesn't matter
whether the gift is very smelly perfume, a tee
shirt,
or a box of chocolates because it doesn't
matter what we give nearly as
much as why we give.
Love can make a small thing seem big. It can make
an
inexpensive thing seem priceless.
When something is
given with love it becomes the best kind of gift
...
a gift of the heart.
If you give, you will receive. Your
gift will return to you in full
measure,
pressed down, shaken together to make room for more,
and
running over. Whatever measure you use in
giving -- large or small
-- it will be used to
measure what is given back to you." (Luke
6:38
NLT)
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